The New York City Police Department Intelligence Bureau is a division of the

New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act i ...

(NYPD) which claims responsibility for the detection and disruption of criminal and terrorist activity through the use of intelligence-led policing. There is limited oversight over the Intelligence Bureau, and it conducts work in secrecy without the

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being informed of operations. The intelligence and

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bureaus fall under the domain of Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, which is commanded by Deputy Commissioner John Miller.

Current subdivisions

Intelligence Operations and Analysis Section (IOAS)

The IOAS is responsible for both collecting and analyzing data for counter-terrorism purposes.

Criminal Intelligence Section (CIS)

Similar to the IOAS, the CIS collects and analyzes data for counter-crime purposes. They also conduct the Field Intelligence Officer (FIO) program, where officers conduct intelligence work with narcotics, firearms, and other criminal investigations.

International Liaison Program (ILP)

The International Liaison Program places NYPD intelligence officers in existing law enforcement agencies around the globe. It was created in 2003 with the intention of counter-terrorism operations and has since found utility in investigating criminal cases that have international elements. The program is externally funded by the New York City Police Foundation. ILP has received criticism for its lack of government oversight, justification, and proper handling of intelligence. Currently, it has officers in 16 cities outside of New York.

Former subdivisions

Demographics / Zone Assessment Unit

The Demographics Unit (later known as the Zone Assessment Unit) was a secret police intelligence division formed after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

to surveil Muslim-Americans. Police Spokespersons did not publicly acknowledge the unit until after the

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revealed the organization through a

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award-winning series of articles. The unit's techniques included eavesdropping on conversations held in public locations, gaining access to internet usage by Muslim groups on college campuses by claiming to be investigating narcotics or gang activity, and labeling entire mosques as terror groups in order to record sermons and spy on religious officials without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Twenty-eight "ancestries of interest were monitored by the unit, ranging from Arab ethnicities like Palestinian and Syrian to heavily Muslim populations from former Soviet states such as Chechnya and Uzbekistan to Black American Muslims". It was noted by the ACLU that the NYPD "expressly excluded from its surveillance and mapping activities non-Muslims such as Coptic Christian Egyptians or Iranian Jews". In 2013, the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), along with Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) and

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(AALDEF) published a report that was critical of NYPD surveillance of their communities, and the Demographics Unit in particular. On April 15, 2014, the

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reported that the NYPD officially dismantled the Zone Assessment Unit. However, there is concern that the data gathered through the program is still being used today. in August 2012, the Chief of the NYPD Intelligence Division, Lt. Paul Galati admitted during sworn testimony that in the six years of his tenure, the unit tasked with monitoring Muslim-American life that had not yielded a single criminal lead. According to the NYPD, there were two specific instances where information from the Zone Assessment Unit was used. In the wake of the 2013 Boston bombing, NYPD deployed to areas inhabited by individuals from the Caucus region, which includes Chechens, both to ensure people in those neighborhoods were not victimized by retaliation and to ensure that the two perpetrators were not able to blend into the area. In another instance, after a leader of the Hazara community was killed by a Pakistan-based organization in Quetta, Pakistan, NYPD was able to respond in the Hazara community. In 2018, the NYPD paid out a settlement to groups and persons that were surveilled and agreed to update their training and manuals and that it would not engage in surveillance predicated upon religion.

References

{{New York City Police Department Law enforcement in the New York metropolitan area Intelligence Bureau